It will be quite difficult to sort out the exact mathematical term that would fit appropriately to the pattern of the rising graph of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic. Mankind had encountered such marauding episodes of diseases in past and had also lost great portions of human resources, but they had been mostly localised and never of the current kind which is notoriously omnipresent. Late Friday night figures show that globally it is 27+ lakh in terms of positives and 1 lakh 93 thousands deaths. Amid this total darkness, the first ray of hope has arrived, much to the relief of all that the only antidote which is a vaccine might not take that much a long time as originally expected. One of the final stages of development of the desperately-sought vaccine, which is trials on humans finally commenced on Thursday in the UK, heralding the countdown of the final outcome the world will be religiously following with great hope.

Much had been written and discussed about humanity’s need of the moment and the race among nations to be the ‘first achiever’ has been quite exciting to follow, reminding the fact that nowhere in global medical history there had been such deep and uninterrupted engagement in search of a vaccine. But now, all focus have converged on the prestigious Oxford University and the vaccinology professor there, Sarah Gilbert who leads the research. The most striking aspect of this endeavour is that a research tenure that normally spreads over 5 years has been compressed to just 4 months and the assurance, which is indeed concurrent to the protocol of this sort that there will be no compromise with safety has also come as an addendum. 

The first two of 800 healthy volunteers of the UK recruited for the study had been injected with the new vaccine named ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and it will be the observation not only for the bio-sciences fraternity but also for the common people to know whether the new vaccine is safe and can generate strong immune responses against the still-undefeatable virus and safeguard healthy people from infection. What next? If the trials are successful, the depressed and corona-overwhelmed world can ride on the hope that one million doses will be ready by September and consequently, there will then be efforts to upscale the manufacturing efforts to make sure that the vaccine becomes a mass asset.

After days and nights of endless deaths, at least something has come to bring the lost smiles. If success arrives, hopefully so, it will then be the collective duty for the world to make sure the vaccine is globally accessible and affordable. It can’t be any nation’s individual property and for the pandemic to end totally, it must be a global possession.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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